Reunited by the Tycoon's Twins

TWENTY-FOUR HOURS LATER, and he was pretty sure he had a handle on this Madeleine thing. They’d managed a whole day of being in the apartment together, caring for the babies, with him in and out of his home office, without a single personal conversation or ankle bone in sight. Even the babies had showed pity on them and had only woken for a quick feed in the night and gone straight back to sleep. Seemed everyone was as keen as he was to get them back on an impersonal footing. Well, good. They were both going to be grown-up about this and pretend that nothing had happened.

‘How about this for a plan for today?’ he suggested as they both sipped a coffee with their breakfast on Monday morning. ‘We both take the babies into the office. They’re treated like minor celebrities, so all you’ll have to do is try and keep track of which one has been taken to which department to be passed around for cuddles. I’ll make sure someone brings you a steady supply of coffee, and you can call me in for nappy emergencies. We’ll do the interviews there after lunch. Does that sound manageable?’

‘If that’s what nannying for you is like then I want the job permanently,’ she said with a slightly forced polite smile. ‘Baby snuggles, no nappies, endless lattes. Sign me up.’

He reflected her creaky grin, wondering where the ease that he had felt before had gone. And then remembered where that ease had led them, and was grateful that they were both back to tiptoeing. ‘That deal is just for you. If you tell our interviewees then the deal’s off the table.’

‘Fine, fine. What time do you need to go in?’

‘Can you be ready by half seven?’ he asked. ‘It’d be good to be at my desk by eight.’

She glanced at the clock on the wall and nodded. ‘How do you want to handle the babies? Take one each—divide and conquer? Or assembly line?’

‘God, right now I just want to leave them to sleep. If you can give me a hand to get their bags packed we can stick a clean nappy on them the minute before we need to walk out the door. They can party in their pyjamas this morning.’

His kids could go out in their

PJs. He could forgo breakfast. But the one thing that he absolutely, definitely could not skip this morning was the cold shower he seemed to be permanently in need of these days.

* * *

He watched Madeleine closely as they walked through the lobby of his office building and couldn’t help the swell of pride that he felt when he saw the evidence of all he had achieved over the past few years. Seeing Madeleine had reminded him of where he had built all of this from in a way that never seemed to happen during his weekly drinks with Jake. His best friend had been there for him all along. He’d seen the first tiny office space that he had rented. And the larger building when the first investments started coming through. And then he had pored over the plans for this building when his company had outgrown its space again, and he had decided that he needed somewhere bespoke. Something that would help to create the vision he had of his company as somewhere creative and innovative and exciting.

Except that wasn’t all he saw when he looked at his place. He also saw the scary number of zeros on his mortgage statement. The one that he wouldn’t have needed if he’d managed to hold his marriage together. This was everything that he had worked for, and everything that he stood to lose if he lost control of his personal life a second time. Everything that he stood to lose if he forgot how vital it was to hold Madeleine at a distance and stop himself getting too close.

There were glass open-plan areas, private offices. Different spaces to suit different personalities and moods. A building full of employees relying on him to keep this company afloat, to keep their wages and their own homes safe and secure.

He chatted with the security guard as he got Madeleine signed in, and nearly lost a twin out of the pushchair before they had even left the lobby. This was always the problem when he brought the babies into work. They were whisked away to be showed off and he could hardly keep track of where they were. He had sold it to Madeleine as an easy morning out, but it was harder to keep track of the babies when they were here than it would be once they were toddling around a busy park by themselves.

‘The babies stay in the pushchair until we are upstairs,’ Finn said to the guy with a beard and a lumberjack shirt from the design floor who was swooping in to coo at them. ‘I promised Madeleine coffee and a comfortable seat before she started having to shepherd them.’

He placed a hand on the small of her back as they crossed the lobby towards the lifts, but pulled it away when he felt her stiffen. So, normal service resumed, he confirmed with a small smile. Good. That was what they both needed. Something had happened between them that night on the sofa. Barriers had come down that he had feared would be impossible to rebuild. She had shared so much with him that he’d thought he had felt the substance of their friendship shift, but it seemed he had been wrong.

This wasn’t beyond saving. They could get themselves back somewhere safe, where they could be friends who saw each other occasionally at Jake’s family events. Finding the right nanny, and helping Madeleine decide what she wanted to do next, would make that happen even faster.

Madeleine’s eyes widened further when he opened the door into his private office, and was it really so terrible to feel such a swell of pride at the expression on her face? It was only as he was hovering at the open glass door into his corner office that he realised how desperate he was for her approval. He stood back and waited while she took a step into the office and then abandoned the pushchair to cross over to the window and look out across the panorama of the London skyline.

‘We didn’t need to queue for the Eye at all,’ she said as her eyes scanned first one way and then the other across the capital. ‘We could have just come up here,’ Madeleine said with a raised eyebrow and a wry smile.

He laughed and shrugged as he walked over to join her. ‘Ah, but you were so keen to do the tourist thing.’

She bumped his shoulder in a friendly way that made him think that their intimacy maybe hadn’t disappeared completely with the passage of a too-polite day.

‘Seriously, Finn. This is amazing. I hope you’re proud, because I am.’ She glanced up at him. ‘Does that sound really condescending? I’m not sure I care if it does because I mean it. I’m really proud of you. You built all this from scratch while I was writing terrible copy I don’t even want to put my name to.’

She must have caught the look that he aimed in her direction at that self-deprecating remark and stopped herself short. Good. He hated that she talked herself down like that. After everything that she had told him over the past few days he wanted to destroy people and places and generally rage out on her behalf. But he couldn’t. The only thing that he could do was support her and protect her, even from herself.

‘Thank you,’ he said, sincerity giving his voice a gravelly edge that surprised him. ‘It means a lot that you think that.’

They stood in silence for a few moments more, transfixed by the sight of the city below.

‘When we were up in the Eye,’ he said, choosing his words carefully, ‘you couldn’t take your eyes off the Houses of Parliament. That’s what you wanted when you were at university, right? Before you had to leave. You wanted to work there.’

He saw surprise on her face, indecision cross her features as she considered him and he prayed to whoever would listen that she would take the leap and trust him with the truth. If she could only be honest with him in the dimmed light of the early hours when they were half delirious with fatigue then this wasn’t a friendship. It wasn’t anything, really.

She looked him dead in the eye and he held his breath.

‘Yes. I wanted to work there. Desperately. As far back as I can remember.’